Kingston Multi-hazard Assessment Site

For a full description of the Kingston Multi-hazard Assessment, see the progress bulletin for this project.

Draft Guidelines

These guidelines are presented in draft form, pending review, update and approval by appropriate Government of Jamaica Agencies and other interested parties in Jamaica.

• Landslide hazard assessment (prepared by Rafi Ahmad)
• Seismic hazard assessment (excerpted from Chapter 4 of the Kingston Seismic Hazard Assessment)

Reports and Papers

General

• Jamaica National Land Policy (July 1996), Section 7.5.3: Implementation (Strategies, Programmes and Projects) [References CDMP Kingston Multi-hazard Assessment Maps.]

• Physical Planning Mechanism and Natural Hazards: a presentation by Blossom Samuels, Town Planning Department, Government of Jamaica.

Landslide Hazard Assessment

• Landslide Susceptibility Maps for the Kingston Metropolitan Area, with notes on their use by Rafi Ahmad and James P. McCalpin.
• Landslide Loss Reduction: A Guide for Kingston Metropolitan Area, Jamaica by Rafi Ahmad, Jerome DeGraff and James P. McCalpin.
• Landslide Hazard Mitigation and Loss-reduction for the Kingston Jamaica Metropolitan Area: Field Guide by Rafi Ahmad et al.
• Interest in landslide hazard information-parallels between Kingston, Jamaica and the San Francisco Bay Region by D.Howell, Earl E. Brabb, and Rafi Ahmad.
• Landslide Hazard Mitigation and Loss-reduction for the Kingston Jamaica Metropolitan Area: Report on a Three-Day Technical Workshop, 26-28 January 1999.
• An article on landslide hazards in Jamaica, which highlighted the landslide data produced for Kingston, appeared in the Sunday Gleaner on 16 August 1998.

Seismic Hazard Assessment

• Kingston Metropolitan Area Seismic Hazard Assessment: Final Report, 1999. (5 sections plus appendices, HTML 1,300k total) Executive Summary and Conclusions only. HTML 25k.
• A final map for the seismic hazard assessment. 235k.

• ArcView shapefiles of data produced for the seismic hazard assessment. (.ZIP format, 500k)

Coastal Hazard Assessment

• Return Period Estimation of Hurricane Perils in the Caribbean (1999) HTML 385k.
• Caribbean Storm Surge Return Periods: Final Report of a Case Study for Montego Bay. (1997) HTML 80k.
• Report on Proceedings of Workshop on the Interpretation, Application and Institutionalization of Storm Surge Maps in the Development Process (Montego Bay 1995) (HTML 35k)

Data

• General: 1:12,500 Digital Elevation Model: dem.zip (IDRISI image and document files in pkzip format--1,1200 k). Images produced from this data are available for review. | Generalized lithology file: litho.zip (ArcView shape file* in pkzip format--177 k)
• Seismic: Earthquake catalog | Well hole data | Gravity survey data | ArcView project for to display gravity data
• Coastal: Topography/Bathymetry database **
• Other: An ArcView script that will import IDRISI images into ArcView: view_imp.ave. [Note: you must have the ArcView Spatial Analyst extension to use this script. Thanks to Justin Moat of the GIS Madagascar Biodiversity Project, Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, for sharing this script.]

* ESRI provides a free data viewer, ArcExplorer, on their web site. This viewer can be used to display various vector and point data formats (including those marked above): http://www.esri.com/base/products/arcexplorer/arcexplorer.html (~7mb)

** The topography/bathymetry database used for the coastal hazard assessment was developed by CDMP from the following sources:

1. The 30-arcsecond map provided with the TAOS model (CDMP has compiled a sources map, with a description of data sources, for a subsequent version of this database).
2. A topographic contour file showing the shoreline, 20-, 40- and 80-m contours for Jamaica. Source: Jamaica NRCA in AutoCAD DXF format.
3. A topographic contours file for the Kingston area. Source: Jamaica NRCA, ESRI Shapefile format.
4. Point soundings. Source: US Defense Mapping Agency Nautical Chart of Kingston Approaches (1:100,000 scale).
5. Point soundings. Source: US Defense Mapping Agency Nautical Chart of Kingston Harbor (1:16,000 scale).
6. Point soundings. Source: US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration side-scanned sonar bathymetry for Jamaica.

The resulting database has a resolution of 6 arc-seconds and is optimized between 50 m below the surface and 200 m above sea level. Kingston harbour is protected by numerous reefs and sandbars, which may be below the resolution of this database and may, therefore, not be depicted appropriately.

Other

CDMP made a poster presentation on the Kingston Multi-hazard Assessment at the Coastal GeoTools '99 conference, held in Charleston SC, April 5-7 1999.